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Find the answers to all those questions you were too embarrassed to ask in Sunday School. Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. Hosted by Luke Taylor.
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Are there DINOSAURS in the Bible?
Job 40
Introduction
Is it possible that dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible itself?
Well that idea is a little too far out there for most people to even consider.
Even those who believe in a young earth tend to believe that the dinosaurs died out either before or during the worldwide flood in Genesis, and that’s why all we have left of them today are fossils buried under layers of earth.
And if you believe in an old earth then you definitely don’t believe Adam was riding a T-Rex around the Garden of Eden because those creatures were millions of years old, according to science.
And yet, the book of Job describes a creature called Behemoth, which sounds an awful lot like a dinosaur. I mean, it doesn’t sound like it could be anything other than a dinosaur. It says it has a tail like a cedar and limbs like bars of iron.
But wait a minute- Job takes place after the flood of Noah. Which makes a dinosaur-sighting seem more out of place than Candace Owens at a bar mitzvah.
I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.
Turn to Job 40, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]
Why talk about dinosaurs?
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about whether dinosaurs make an appearance in Scripture.
And I just thought this would be a fun topic to hit on while we’re in that weird transition period between Christmas and New Years, and we’re all like: do I keep reflecting on the holiday season…or should I start anything new before January 1…or do I just keep eating more cheese?
And that’s where I’m at right now. Cheese.
So anyway. Dinosaurs. That’s what we’re talking about today.
Dinosaurs and me go way back. Like, when I was in, like, second-third-fourth grade, I was really into dinosaurs. I guess lots of little boys were, but like, I would read science books on dinosaurs, I knew what like all of them were called, I watched the Jurassic Park movies all the time. (There were only two of them at that time.) I used to sit on the couch with my BB gun and pretend I was fighting back against the dinosaurs when they’d show up on screen.
One time on a family trip to Branson, Missouri, my parents bought me a hardcover dinosaur book at one of the outlet malls down there, and I read the heck out of that thing. One day I was lying on my stomach out on the trampoline reading my dinosaur book- I was probably 9 or 10 at the time- when little drops of “something” started falling on my book. It was not a rainy day. I looked up and in the tree above my head sat a red bird who was relieving himself on me. And not technically on me, but worse, on my hardcover dinosaur book. I ran inside, got my BB gun, and came back out and shot down that bird. It took two hits to kill it. Then I had a very hard next couple of days processing that violent act of vengeance and reconsidering the dark path my life was heading down. Because it truly was a beautiful red bird. But it was also a truly beautiful dinosaur book, which was HARDCOVER by the way, and the bird kinda started it.
So me and dinosaurs go way back. But this episode is about how far back humanity goes with dinosaurs. Because most of you listening will probably say, “Luke Luke Luke, dinosaurs and human beings never co-existed. There was the Cretaceous period and the Jurassic Period and the Triassic period and humans came along millions and millions of years later.”
Others of you may say, “Well of course dinosaurs co-existed with humans. God made animals and humans on the 6th day, and all the dinosaurs died in the flood and that’s why we don’t have them anymore.” So we probably have some listeners who are theistic evolutionists and others who are Young Earth Creationists and perhaps some who are Old Earth Creationists who reject evolution but still believe in an old earth. And I have no qualms with any of you; these are secondary issues. They don’t affect your salvation and good Christians can disagree on these things. And no matter which camp you’re in, I hope you’ll listen along today with an open mind.
Because there are even Young Earth Creationists who will say that perhaps humans and dinosaurs existed side-by-side, but we don’t have any record of dinosaurs in the Bible. Maybe Adam played fetch with a raptor and maybe not, but the dinosaurs probably died out in the flood because they seem to have died out and gotten fossilized a long long time ago.
Job’s Science Quiz
However, the book of Job took place after the flood, and there’s something I’d like us to take a close look at today. The Book of Job is probably the oldest book in the Bible; by which I mean, it took place before Moses ever started writing the words of Genesis 1:1. I used to wonder if it possibly took place pre-flood, but I learned that one of Job’s friends came from a town that existed at the time of Abraham, so that puts this really early in human history but after Noah’s flood.
But an interesting aspect of this book is that we do get a lot of insights into Creation from Job’s book. There are a lot of comments made about God creating the world and the Sons of God that we’ve talked about before from Genesis 6.
Now, these comments are not the point of Job’s book. If you know anything about Job’s sad story, then you don’t need me to explain much of the context. Job lost his family, his property and his health, and he has a long conversation with his friends about why God is putting Job through all this. Job’s friends give him a bunch of answers, but they’re all wrong. Then God finally shows up in the last few chapters of the book and God gives Job no answers, just a bunch more questions.
In fact, God gives Job an extensive science quiz. It goes on for four chapters, and God asks Job 70 questions about His creation.
And throughout that quiz, God brings up a series of animals- goats, oxen, even ostriches- and it all leads up to a mysterious animal known as Behemoth.
Job 40:15
“Behold, Behemoth,
which I made as I made you;
he eats grass like an ox.
The word “Behemoth” is a unique word in Scripture, only showing up right here in the Hebrew. However, there’s another Hebrew word- behemah- which simply means “a four-footed animal.” It’s often translated as “cattle” or “beasts” in Scripture. So it can apply to lots of creatures, obviously, so we’re going to have to read more details to narrow this down.
Verse 16
Behold, his strength in his loins,
and his power in the muscles of his belly.
Which describes a lot of us this time of year after the Thanksgiving dinners and the Christmas dinners and the cheese.
When you get back into the office next year and someone says, “Hey, looks like you put on a little weight during the holidays,” the Biblical response you can say to them now is, “My power is in my stomach muscles.”
So it talks about the creature having strong loins and strong muscles in its belly. So this causes many commentators to say that perhaps Behemoth was an elephant or a hippo. There are a couple of scholars I really love- John Walvoord and Roy Zuck- they have some of my favorite commentaries I own on the shelf behind my desk here- and they believe Behemoth was a hippopotamus. But I can’t get on board with that because of what comes next:
Verse 17
He makes his tail stiff like a cedar;
the sinews of his thighs are knit together.
It compares its tail right here to a cedar. That’s a tree. Now, how many animals do you know that have a tail like a tree?
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never passed the hippos at the zoo and said, “Did you check out the tail on that thing?” That seems to pretty well knock out hippos and elephants from consideration here.
So that causes other commentators to suggest that Behemoth is an alligator or a crocodile, since they have some of the most noteworthy tails in the animal kingdom. But wait, let me read that verse again:
He makes his tail stiff like a cedar;
the sinews of his thighs are knit together.
What is significant about the thighs of an crocodile? That knocks them out. Furthermore, verse 15 had said it eats grass like an ox. See ya later, alligator.
Verse 18
His bones are tubes of bronze,
his limbs like bars of iron.
I have to tell you guys, I don’t know of any creatures alive today who fit this description. However, it sounds a heck of a lot like some of those creatures I used to read about in my hardcover dinosaur book. Specifically, like a brontosaurus or a brachiosaurus or an apatosaurus.
Now, some have posited that this is a fictional creature, something like an ancient Bigfoot. Now I’m probably going to get a bunch of emails telling me that Bigfoot is not a fictional creature, but bear with me. Some try to explain why Behemoth can’t be any modern living creature by saying it was a mythological creature familiar to Job’s audience.
However, that just really wouldn’t fit because everything else in God’s science quiz has been real. Real weather patterns, real animals, real physics and biology and astronomy. In the previous few chapters, it talked about lions, ravens, mountain goats, deer, wild donkeys, oxen, ostriches, horses, hawks, eagles. And now Behemoth. It just wouldn’t fit contextually if it was a mythological creature. It wouldn’t back up God’s point to start talking about a fictional creature here to demonstrate His creative power if God didn’t actually create it.
And I can’t believe I never noticed this before but let me re-read
Job 40:15
Behold, Behemoth,
which. I. made. as. I. made. you.
Did God make humankind? Yes. And God says He made Behemoth just as He made man.
So that should put the final nail in the coffin of this idea that Behemoth is a made-up creature.
Let me finish up the text on Behemoth
Job 40:19-24
19 “He is the first of the works of God;
let him who made him bring near his sword!
20 For the mountains yield food for him
where all the wild beasts play.
21 Under the lotus plants he lies,
in the shelter of the reeds and in the marsh.
22 For his shade the lotus trees cover him;
the willows of the brook surround him.
23 Behold, if the river is turbulent he is not frightened;
he is confident though Jordan rushes against his mouth.
24 Can one take him by his eyes,
or pierce his nose with a snare?
Why would it be so hard to hit him in the eyes or the nose? Well, perhaps if he’s a long-neck- as the Land Before Time series called them- then yeah, he’d be pretty hard to get a headshot in on.
Brian Thomas of the Institute for Creation Research- with a Masters Degree in biotechnology- says “Perhaps the best match for the Job 40 description is a sauropod.” A sauropod is a long-neck. And also matching the description in this chapter is that it eats grass.
Scientists used to say that grass didn’t come out until millions of years after dinosaurs went extinct. Which I found wild but that’s what they believed. However, scientists found microscopic bits of grass in fossilized sauropod poop during a dig in India, according to an article called “Dinosaurs Ate Rice” in Creation Science Update.
Of course, if those scientists read their Bible, they would have learned that God made grass on Day 3 of creation, before dinosaurs. I know not everybody takes those verses as literally as I do, but in this case, science agrees with the Bible: grass came before the animals.
And by the way, if you ever hate your job, at least you aren’t having to dig up and analyze what’s in dinosaur poop.
So back to the point: long-neck dinosaurs were herbivores, just like Behemoth. Herbivores eat plants, carnivores eat meat. Omnivores eat both. I eat cheese. And I believe Behemoth was a long-neck.
Next Time
Now, there’s another creature in God’s science lesson called Leviathan, which may have also been a dinosaur, but a more sea-based dinosaur; however, I think Leviathan deserves his own episode, maybe even a whole series of podcasts, so I’m gonna save him for another time.
Next time on this podcast, we have an interview with author and researcher Brian Godawa. I recently read his book Noah Primeval, which is a fictionalized story of Noah that brings in a lot of extra biblical sources to flesh out his story. I found this book so interesting that I shot Brian Godawa an email and asked if I could pick his brain on a few things, and he immediately responded and was very gracious with his time, and I look forward to sharing that conversation with you next week.
And then after that, we’ll begin a series on the Book of Enoch, which I’ve been teasing for a long time, and it’s finally coming. We’ll spend a few months exploring all that that book has to offer, and it offers quite a lot of information that will help us understand our bibles better.
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Closing Thoughts
In closing today, I’ll just say, it’s hard for me to read about Behemoth and see anything other than a sauropod dinosaur. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Study it for yourself.
I think of it like that old game Guess Who. Do you remember that one? You’d have all these characters on your board, one of them was your opponents’ character, and you had to ask questions that narrowed it down and narrowed it down until you had just one possibility left for who it could be.
Well, just take Job 40 and play Guess Who with all the animals of the animal kingdom, including the extinct animals, and see what you come up with.
You don’t have to take my word for it. I don’t have all the answers.
And that’s really the point of God’s science quiz to Job in these chapters. He is trying to drill it into our heads: you don’t have all the answers.
Instead, we just need to put our trust in the God who does.
(But I do think there are dinosaurs in the bible)
And if you think believing that is weird, I hope you’re a little more weird today, too. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.